CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 30
Is Anyone Going to Get a Hollywood Ending?
There was no sleep after that.
Three people dead.
A broken marriage.
A broken heart. No, three.
But even though Emma does love Fred, I think she’ll find in time it wasn’t a lasting love. Not one that could’ve sustained them past the bubble of the movie.
She’ll never know. He might’ve had real feelings, or he might’ve been acting. She’ll wonder about that, too. She’ll blame herself and say that she should’ve seen it. Seen through his veneer and her old crush and found the very heart of him.
I understand how she’s going to feel because I feel guilty, too.
I always thought one of the good things about being a writer is that you have insight into people. A kind of antennae for motivations and wants. Because you have to put yourself in everyone’s shoes. You have to feel the darkness and imagine what could bring someone there. Even if you’re not writing about yourself—and I never really was, only a shadow on the wall with better hair and better decisions—you have to make it feel like you are. You have to make your readers believe that you feel what your character feels.
Writing is acting.
But I wasn’t thinking about that when I was spending hours on set with headphones around my neck, sitting in a chair marked WRITER .
I was thinking—this is cool.
I was pissed at the changes in the story.
I was wrapped up in myself, so I never saw this coming.
Murder times three.
“Do you think they’ll confess?” Oliver asks me. We’re standing on the balcony of our villa, looking out at the ocean. It’s early, the sun just rising, and the storm has finally passed.
The literal storm, not the theoretical one.
Is there a difference at this point?
“Does it matter?” I say, then lean my head against his shoulder. He feels warm, and I’m cold inside.
Something in me feels dead.
Maybe it’s my optimism.
That things will work out. That there’s a solution just around the corner.
But don’t worry. I’ve already told you I don’t feel things for nearly as long as I should.
“I would’ve thought you’d want to know how it all came together,” Oliver says.
“Right?”
“So, why don’t you?”
“I’m tired. Three people are dead. Harper’s heart is broken. Take your pick.”
“And Emma’s?”
“Hers, too.”
He squeezes me to him and we stare at the surf. It’s high, the waves crashing into the bay. Gulls are squealing and circling above the water, diving in, looking for something. Food, I guess. You can’t fish during a hurricane. They must be hungry.
“You know,” I say, “I’m starting to have met an awful lot of murderers.”
“All the way back to high school.”
“She was so popular in high school. How did she get from that to murder?”
“A lot of attention is never good for anyone.”
I smile. “I’ve always thought there were two kinds of people. Those who want to go back to high school and those who don’t.”
“And which are you?”
“High school was a nightmare.” 107
“So, no high school then?”
“Oh, no, I’d go back.”
He bursts out laughing. “Why?”
“Look at what I’ve accomplished. Those bitches would be jealous.”
“What bitches?”
“All the bitches who told me I wasn’t pretty enough or thin enough or smart enough.”
He frowns. “They said that?”
“It was implied.”
“Hmmm.” He plants a soft kiss on my forehead. “This mess is quite the story.”
“How would you write it?”
His mouth twists. “Your next book?”
“I do owe them a manuscript.” I touch his hand. “Tell me.”
“I think Simone was one of those girls to Fred—the ones who are there when you need them but that you can never admit you’re with in public.”
“A hidden girl,” I say.
“Yeah.”
“You never did that, right?”
“No.”
“Good.” I run my hand on his cheek. It’s scratchy with stubble. “Go on.”
“So they have this on-again, off-again thing. Enough for her to know his parents and for them to disapprove. She has real feelings. He doesn’t. They break up, and then he goes on and becomes a huge star. But he keeps her around. Because she’s normal to him. He knows she wants to be with him because of him, not who he is.”
“Men think like that?”
“They do.”
“Noted.”
“Years go by. Fred makes some stupid decisions, loses his money, gets in a fight with Tyler, and is feeling pretty desperate. And then Italy happened,” Oliver says. “It was all over the news. And the book was back on the bestseller list.”
“And Tyler owned the rights.”
“Tyler and Fred.”
“Who suggested they make the movie to make them square?” I ask.
“Fred. He saw it as the solution to all of his problems. He also suggested they hire Emma, aware of her long-standing crush, and then he moved in. It was all laid out for him in the script.”
“And Simone?”
“They wanted to make the movie quickly. She was available...”
“When did she discover his plan?”
“Maybe she always knew.”
“I don’t think so. I don’t like her, but Simone wouldn’t see murder as a solution. In an emergency, yes. But not more than that.”
“You know her better than I do.”
“I guess.” I hug myself. “There’s still something missing. I can’t put my finger on it.” I think it over. “Who was tweeting? And what about the murder on the schedule...If the plan was to kill Emma, why signal it? Why put her on her guard?”
“To divert suspicion away from Fred?”
“Maybe? Anything else?”
“I can’t figure out how the cat plays into all of this,” Oliver says.
“Maybe Fred put something in his mother’s food to make it taste bad?”
“Why, though?”
“Was he...trying to kill his mother? Who inherits when she dies? God, I didn’t even think of that.” I bite my lip. “Or it could have just been to create generalized suspicion? To feed the narrative that there was a killer out there to divert suspicion away from Fred?”
“Is that what the electrocution was?”
“It must’ve been...because that was before the wedding...If Emma died then, Fred wouldn’t inherit anything, right? Wait, no. That’s not right. Emma said they had already changed their wills...when they went to sign the prenup. So it didn’t matter when Emma died. Only that she did. Ugh.”
Oliver frowns. “You really want to write this?”
“What if we write it together?”
“Is this a pity invite?”
“It’s a love invite. I want to be tied to you forever.”
“Like Connor?”
I wince, but I deserve that. I take a step toward him and wind my arms around his neck. “No, not like that. Not like that at all.”
“Vicki isn’t expecting a book from two of us.”
“She’ll get over it. Besides, she’ll be busy editing Connor .”
“I did not see that coming.”
“Right?” I kiss him. “So, what do we call it?”
“How about I Went to Hollywood and All I Got Was This Lousy Murder ?”
“Um, we’ll work on that. But we make a good team.”
He pulls me closer. “We do.”
“So you’ll do it?”
“What’s the worst that could happen?”
“I thought we promised we’d never say that to each other again?”
He smiles. “I’m feeling reckless.”
“I’ll say.”
“I will promise you one thing.”
“Oh, yeah?”
He brushes his lips against mine. “The ending will surprise you.”
I kiss him back. “Good.”
And if this were some other kind of book, I’d cue the rising music—maybe “Sweet Nothing” because there’s a perfect Taylor song for every moment—and we’d end it here, me and Oliver in a clinch.
But it’s this kind of book.
Oh, wait. Did you think this was the end?
Ha ha.
No.
Anyway, Oliver does kiss me again, but then I notice something out of the side of my eye.
Someone.
“Who is that?”
Oliver squints. “Is that Tyler?”
He’s right. Tyler’s picking his way up the path toward our villa. He’s dressed in the clothes I saw him in on the dock, casual businessman, but he looks like someone who hasn’t slept well in a couple of days because he spent the night in jail. Hair a mess, stubble, a hunch to his gait.
“They let him out of jail, I guess?” I say.
“Makes sense.”
“Is he coming to talk to us?”
“Not sure.”
I watch him as he looks up at our balcony, then turns away. “He’s going to Emma’s.”
“Why?”
My heart skips a beat. “My God, that man doesn’t give up.”
“You think he’s trying to get back with Emma on the day she discovers her husband is a murderer?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him.” I take Oliver’s hand. “Let’s go.”
“You don’t think we should leave them alone?”
“No.”
I tug him through the villa and out the front door to the path. By the time we get there, Tyler has disappeared.
“Come on, hurry up.”
“Are you worried?”
“Call it an instinct.”
We reach the front door to Emma’s villa. Earlier, after Officer Anderson took Fred and Simone away, she’d said she was taking a sedative and was going to go to sleep. We’d offered to stay with her, but she said she needed to be alone. I thought it was a bad idea at the time, and that feeling is increasing, my stomach in knots, my hands shaking as I try the door.
It’s not locked, and I can hear voices inside. Tyler’s and Emma’s.
I put a finger to my lips and ease the door open.
“—I can help you,” Tyler says.
“I don’t need your help, Tyler.”
“Clearly you do.”
I look back at Oliver. His face is creased with concentration.
“I’m handling everything fine.”
“You call this handling things? And what happens if I tell Officer Anderson that you knew? Are you going to kill me, too?”
Wait, what ?
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re not telling Officer Anderson anything.” Emma’s voice drips with contempt. “What did you think, coming here? That I was going to want you now ?”
“I want answers.”
“About?”
“Why you tried to frame me for murder.”
I lose my grip on the door handle and the door swings open with a loud CREAK . Shit.
“You might as well come in, El,” Emma says, her voice oddly calm.
I step through the door with Oliver right behind me. My throat is tight, my mind whirring.
What. The. Fuck. Is. Happening?
We walk into the living room. Emma’s wearing a pair of white joggers that I know say brIDE on the butt because we ordered them together one night over a bottle of wine. Her hair is up in a high ponytail, her face free of makeup. She looks calm and composed, the complete opposite of how I left her a couple of hours ago.
“How did you know I was there?” I ask, trying to make my voice sound normal but failing.
“Tyler told me you spotted him. I knew it was only a matter of time before you stuck your nose in.”
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Tyler was just leaving.”
“No, Em, I’m not.”
“Tyler?” I say. “What are you doing here?”
He takes in and releases a slow breath, deciding something. “She knew.”
“Knew what?”
“About Simone and Fred.”
My eyes fly to Emma. She doesn’t react, just stands there, patient.
“How?”
“I told her.”
“When?”
“Right after they got engaged.”
Oh my God. My God.
“Em?”
She looks at me, and it’s like I’m looking at her for the first time. Like I’m finally seeing her and she’s not someone I recognize. She’s a stranger on a screen.
“So?”
“You’ve been lying to me. To everyone.”
She’s been acting . Acting like she didn’t know about Fred and Simone. That she didn’t know about his debts. That she didn’t know about any of it, which means...which means...
“It’s more than that,” Tyler says.
“ You killed them?” Oliver says. “José and Ken and Shawna?”
Emma blinks slowly and now I do recognize her. It’s what she does when she needs a minute to process. When she’s taking a beat.
“You think I overpowered a two-hundred-pound man and put him in a climbing harness after he was dead? And why would I kill Ken? Or Shawna?”
I hold my face in my hands, my brain whirring, whirring, whirring.
“It was Fred you wanted to kill,” I say. “If Tyler told you about the cheating after you got engaged. No way you’d just let that go. ‘Trust but verify,’ right?” 108
I work it through, the pieces of the puzzle clicking into place like they always do eventually. The solution is there in the things you’ve already experienced. You just have to know where to look.
“After Tyler told you that, you went looking and found his burner phone, didn’t you?”
She says nothing, and this is how I know I’m right.
I think I’m going to be sick.
But I can’t stop now.
“What would you do once you found that? It had those texts on it, with Tyler, so you asked him about the money, right? And he told you?”
“Yes,” Tyler says. “I told her about all of it. That he was either broke or hiding assets.”
“And that he’d suggested Emma to play Cecilia?”
“Yes.”
“And then there were the meeting times on the phone. With someone else. You’d want to be sure about that, too. So, you followed him and you saw him with Simone. And it wasn’t innocent. Not someone telling off an ex who he could’ve talked to at any time on set without raising suspicion. And you knew you’d been betrayed. But it was more than that. Something pushed you over the edge. You figured something else out...Something clicked into place for you. What was it?”
I stop to figure it out. It’s so quiet in here you could hear a pin drop, and I hate that I have to break this silence. That I have to fill in the gaps and come to this conclusion but there’s nothing to be done about that.
CLINK.
“The Twitter feed. You found that on his phone, too, right? On his regular phone. He was tweeting gossip about you, making it seem like someone was out to get you. So why would Fred be taking up with you, marrying you, but still be with Simone? Why would he be tweeting about you? Making it look like someone hated you? A man with money problems. A gambler. And the script changes. The script moving away from it all being a scam to get Cecilia’s money to them having a happy ending, you saw what that meant. You figured out that they were planning on killing you.”
Again Emma says nothing.
“Why not just pull out of the film?” Oliver asks. “Break things off and leave?”
“She couldn’t. Not without damaging her career in a way that might be fatal. You can’t show that kind of weakness—especially not if you’re a woman. And it wouldn’t just be the shoot but also the press tour and having to do endless interviews about your love story gone wrong. And then, maybe a sequel...”
“Sounds unpleasant, but—”
“It’s more than that,” I say to Oliver. “I know Emma. It was the betrayal. Emma’s had a crush on Fred since she was a kid. He used that. He used her . He wanted to kill her . No. It was too much. He deserved it.”
“You think that?” Oliver says.
“Emma thinks that.”
Our eyes connect, and that silent communication that’s always been possible between us works as usual. I know this is what she was thinking. I know what she’s done.
“She didn’t kill José. That must’ve been Fred. And he did try to electrocute her in the hot tubs. But she knew he was going to do that. She was on her guard.” I pause, rethinking the scene. “She was going to put Harper’s phone in the water to ensure Fred hadn’t done anything to it.”
And if Harper’s phone hadn’t been there, she’d have found something else to put in it first.
Maybe Harper. Maybe me.
Fuck.
“Fred is an idiot,” Emma says, finally breaking her silence.
“Yes.”
“But Ken...” I keep my eye on Emma. “She killed Ken. It could’ve been done by a woman full of rage, and it opened up so many possibilities. Everyone would assume it was a mistake for Fred. But it could also have been Connor. Which is why Cathy is here. She invited her. Emma knows all about Cathy. So why not add her into the mix? Make it seem like it might be about me and Connor. The more suspects, the better.”
A lump forms in my throat. If she killed Ken because he looked like Fred, was she going to kill me because I looked like her?
Despite everything, I shy away from that possibility, but I shouldn’t.
Because once you see murder as the answer to your problems, then all bets are off.
“And Shawna?” Oliver asks.
“That was her, too. She and Fred were alone for enough time. She told me she took off her dress and had a quick shower. There’s a back door in her room. I saw it when we were getting ready for the wedding. Is that what happened, Em? Shawna came to see you? She was coming to warn you. She knew Fred and Simone were planning to kill you. And you couldn’t have that. Not after everything you’d gone through to keep it silent. So you stabbed her and shoved her out into the rain and you thought she was dead. That you could blame it on Simone. So she’d go to jail, and Fred would die before the weekend was out. She had something in mind. I’m not sure what...Oh! That’s why she had the knife she used on Shawna. She was going to kill Fred in his sleep. It must be here, somewhere. Hidden.”
“Or she got rid of it after Officer Anderson left. That’s why she wanted to be alone,” Oliver says. “To get rid of any remaining evidence.”
“That makes sense.”
“What about me?” Tyler asks. “If I was locked up, I couldn’t be responsible.”
“No,” I say. “It was Fred’s plan to blame you for Emma’s murder. But then he had to kill José, so he shifted to pinning that murder on you. He must’ve decided to wait to kill Emma in some other way. Or to live off her money like he said earlier. Either way his problems were solved. Or so he thought.”
“But what about what I knew about Emma? I could’ve told on her.”
“I think Emma was pretty sure you wouldn’t. You came here to confront her instead of telling Officer Anderson, didn’t you? You do want to get back with her. If she had to, she’d string you along until she’d convinced you she didn’t do anything.”
Tyler’s head hangs with the truth of what I’m saying, and I can’t even look at Emma now.
“Did we forget anything?” I ask. “The murder being announced—Emma approved the schedule. She told me so herself. And she didn’t invite her parents to the wedding. She wouldn’t want them around for this. She showed me the note Fred left for her so I could testify that she was the intended victim. Wait. That’s what she was going to do—she was going to kill Fred and say he attacked her. Then she’d uncover his plot to kill her and say she had to defend herself and the police would believe it because it was true.”
I think it through again. This is what we were missing all along—two interwoven plots, one spurred by the other. There were two things to diagnose. Because what do doctors know about solving murders?
“Aren’t you going to defend yourself, Emma?” Tyler asks.
“What’s the point? You think I did it, that’s why you came here, isn’t it?”
“I realized in jail...I put it together. You could’ve come to me. I would’ve helped you.”
“You don’t get it, do you?”
“What?”
“I was never going to be with you.”
Tyler goes to say something and Emma puts up her hand. “Just stop. You too, El. I’m not going to confess. I am not stupid and weak like Simone or Fred. You don’t have any proof. And I’m not giving you any.”
“They’ll find it,” I say. “And everything you tried to hide, it’ll come out anyway.”
“So be it.” She lifts her chin and turns to the window, and she looks so alone in this moment, so far from me, even though she’s just across the room.
My best friend. My oldest friend.
I failed her.
I could’ve stopped this and it’s all my fault.
I remember saying to Harper once that nothing good ever happened to me in Italy.
But that’s not true.
It’s When in Rome that’s brought me tragedy, over and over again. It doesn’t matter what the format is.
Someone dies in every iteration.
Someone dies every time I go on vacation.
But no one’s supposed to die at a wedding. 109
“I happened to be walking by, and...can I be of assistance?”
“Shut up, Tucci!”
107 I like “So High School,” though. Taylor and Travis 4Ever.
108 I told you this was her motto a while back. And also that she’s totally the kind of girlfriend who’d read her boyfriend’s texts.
109 Am I writing song lyrics at a time like this? Looks like it.